Malaria and pneumonia effects on rice, vanilla production and rural household income in Madagascar: case of the Sava region

Abstract

In Madagascar, malaria remains the leading cause of consultation and deaths at hospital at all ages and pneumonia is one of the main causes of the under-five mortality and account for 45% of children hospitalizations. The number of these cases and deaths has not decreased during the last ten years. This paper aims to determine the effects of malaria and pneumonia cases on rice and vanilla production and income. We used data from a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2016  by the authors on 975 rural households and 3,586 individuals of the SAVA region in the northeast of Madagascar. After checking the presence of endogeneity, ordinary least-square method was used instead of two-stage least squares. Our results showed that malaria has no effect on production, and therefore does not affect income. Pneumonia had an effect on production of rice and vanilla. Moreover, the cost of malaria and pneumonia healthcare burdened by households affect their consumption by reducing expenditure on housing. There are many campaigns for the fight against malaria in Madagascar, but pneumonia prevention measures are very rare. Therefore, pneumonia should be considered in the same way as malaria due to its effects on production and investment to fight against these two diseases must be strengthened in order to decrease the costs for the households.